


Put All Your Faults to Bed

by hauntedlittledoll



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 00:56:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1285258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedlittledoll/pseuds/hauntedlittledoll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steph is the unofficial Wayne family counselor, and her hours are late.  Very late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put All Your Faults to Bed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kiragecko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiragecko/gifts).



> Title taken from the song “King” by Lauren Aquilina.

"Brown.  Brown.  Wake up."

Steph vindictively swept out with her wonderfully pointed elbow, but her tormentor dodged the jab of justice.  His ability to do so coupled with the use of her surname told Steph exactly who was in her bedroom.

"Damian," she muttered, blearily focusing on the figure in Robin red and yellow.  A moment later, Steph bolted upright and lunged for the boy hero.  "What happened?" she demanded, seizing a handful of cape and running her other hand over the body armor.  The tunic hid the blood masterfully, but his cape was smeared with the rusty brown substance and half-shredded.

"I had a disagreement with Killer Croc."  Damian dislodged her, and he couldn’t be too badly hurt if he was still displaying mad ninja skills.

Steph hoped.

"Grayson interfered."  Damian had to work at the next bit, scowling at the floor.  "Broken leg.  Ninety-four stitches.  Concussion.  The cowl clearly offers inadequate protection, and I will be staying with you now."

Stephanie blinked.  She had followed him up until the last bit, and the leap in logic was a doozy.  “Wait a minute— _what?!”_

Damian crossed his arms with the annoyed “tt” sound that only he could make.  With his solemn blue eyes finally fixed on her, Steph realized that the boy hero was missing both mask and gloves which made him less-hero and more-boy.  “I.  Am.  Staying. Here.  With.  You.”

Steph belatedly took in the abandoned backpack and dual swords in the corner.  _"Why?"_

"I don’t have anywhere else to go!" Damian exploded, pin-wheeling a moment with clenched fists before pulling in on himself again.  "Grayson is hurt.  Because of me."

Steph cautiously took his tightly curled fingers in her own, squeezing as she tugged the little boy closer.  “Sweetie, it’s not your fault.  You know that.  This can’t be the first time that Dick got hurt because of bad timing or bad position or even just bad decisions.  He doesn’t blame you.”

"Yes, he does," Damian said dully, eyes closed and his lashes dark against even his cheek.  "I’m the one that gave him the concussion … with a crowbar," he added as if ticking off all his sins against Bat and Robin alike.  "It was convenient.  And the monster was attacking me because I taunted it.  Grayson got in the way.  And he forgot the Batman voice."  Damian’s voice took on Dick’s cadence albeit on a slightly strangled note.  _"Why can’t you just do what you’re told?"_   The ten year old broke her grip.  “Then he collapsed.”

Stephanie sighed and reeled the kid in for a proper hug.  It wasn’t easy; Steph had more huggable one-piece action figures.  “Okay, I’m not denying that there’s a lesson here, but every Robin has to learn when to obey or disobey the Bat.  Sometimes he’s right, and sometimes we see things that he doesn’t.  It’s a balance.”

Damian was still stiff and unyielding in her arms, but not actively trying to escape her embrace.  Steph sighed into his prickly hair.

"The thing that we both love and hate about Dick Grayson is that not even the very best of painkillers can keep him down for more than a couple hours.  So if we don’t get you back to the Cave before he wakes up, Dick will come looking for you—broken leg, stitches, concussion, Alfred notwithstanding."

"For retribution?" Damian frowned into her neck.

"Because he loves you," Stephanie corrected.

"Don’t be stupid, Brown," Damian scoffed, pulling away.  "He would much rather be Nightwing than the Batman to my Robin, and I cannot work with Father.  I will have to settle for Batgirl."

"Really feeling the love here, kid," Stephanie grumbled, hauling herself out of bed to deal with the situation in a more hands-on approach.  "You may not have noticed, but this isn’t Wayne Tower or the Manor.  This dinky eight-by-ten space is the extent of casa de Steph, and trust me when I say that the floor looks pretty comfy in comparison to the torture device masquerading as a couch downstairs."

"I have been trained to withstand torture," Damian waved dismissively, and Steph pushed away the impulse to hug the tiny former-assassin again.  She’d done it once tonight and still had all her limbs; she could try again next week.  "Stop looking at me like that, Brown.  If you are that concerned about your furniture, we should acquire an apartment closer to Firewall."

"Broke college student," Stephanie reminded him, running both her hands through her hair.  Prolonged contact with any of the Wayne boys made her want to tear it out.

"Son of Batman," Damian returned.  Then the boy flushed, ducking his head.  "I have an … allowance."  Damian said the word ‘allowance’ like it was a dirty word.  "Thanks to Drake," he continued to mutter, "but it should still be more than sufficient."

Steph barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes.  Tim would insist on an allowance to teach the new Robin money management … and then proceed to make said-allowance large enough to maintain property in Gotham City.

"It would be useful," Damian continued, still laying out his case with the precision and flash of a promising attorney.  "You would be closer to both Firewall and campus.  Farther from Drake."  Only Damian would consider that a bonus.  "It will have better security, and you could bring your mother with you, if you must."  As if Damian had any objection to Steph’s mom, who was awesome, and read most of Tolkien to Damian the last time he was confined to bed.  "You would have permanent back-up in the field without having to rely on other heroes.  _Kryptonians_.”

"Stop while you’re ahead," Steph sighed.  She took a deep breath, and leveled one finger at the younger vigilante’s forehead.  Damian nearly went cross-eyed as he took a step backward.  Steph would take that as a win.  "Do not think you can sidetrack me with logistics and pretty promises, Boy Wonder.  I have worked with both Tim and your father."  She let that settle a minute, and then made her voice soft so Damian had to listen harder:  "Dick.  Grayson.  Loves you."

"Don’t be so ridiculously sentimental."

"Watch me," Steph retorted.  "You made a mistake.  Dick will forgive you.  He does that.  Did you even try apologizing before you ran away?"

Damian looked at her as if she was some new kind of potentially unintelligent, possibly unhinged alien life form.  “The man was unconscious,” he pronounced gravely, “and now heavily sedated.”

 _Good for Alfred_ , Steph cheered mentally before getting back on track.  It was a slippery slope, but she was gaining ground.  “And when he wakes up,” she prompted out loud.

"My intent should have been perfectly clear," Damian answered stiffly.  After a few moments of uncomfortable silence: _"He_ intervened; _I_ was aiming for Killer Croc.”

"And how did that work out for you?"

Damian glared at her.  “Poorly.”

Succinct and moody was probably as far as Steph would be able to get tonight.  The message would mean more anyway when it came from Dick breaking in to find his missing Robin.

Stalking past Damian, Steph rooted in her dresser for a t-shirt stolen from Tim.  “Go.  Clean up and change,” she ordered crisply, brandishing the garment like a white flag.

Damian stared.

"Guests—even uninvited guests—get the bed," she told him.  "And you’re not sleeping in my bed covered in Batman’s blood.  It’s gross."

Damian continued to stare, and Steph proceeded to give him a little shove in the direction of the bathroom.  Clearly uncomfortable with the ease of his victory, Damian obeyed.  Steph tried not to preen.  Demon wrangling was a skill, and she knew her efforts in this arena were only surpassed by Dick and Alfred.

It was good to be Batgirl.

Steph turned back to the bed, ridding it of the extra pillows and blankets that would otherwise be rejected as Damian turned her bed from a place of rest to a potential ninja launch-pad.  She built herself a nice cozy nest on the floor, prepared for battle, and resolved to finagle an air mattress out of Team Batgirl’s budget if middle-of-the-night Robin pep talks were going to become a thing again.

Curious, Steph checked Damian’s bag to see what the ten year old runaway had considered necessary, and she had to stifle a laugh when she found only his spare Robin uniform and a toothbrush.  She returned the knapsack to the corner as Damian reappeared in the doorway.

"That’s mine," he issued crankily.

Steph smiled and didn’t point out the hypocrisy of the Gotham U hoodie that he had appropriated from the bathroom.  “Didn’t really think this through, did ya?” she teased, crawling into her nest of blankets.

"Excessive baggage would only weigh me down," Damian returned sharply, vaulting over her to land on the bed.  Steph could feel the discontent rising off the little boy in waves as he tossed and turned in an effort to make himself comfortable.  Somehow, Damian held it in and eventually went still with deep, perfectly even breaths.

Steph waited patiently for that moment, because she knew that Damian wasn’t really sleeping.

"I’ll make you a deal," she offered, making her own voice sound sleepy and muffled by her pillow.  "If Dick won’t take you back of his own free will, not only will I partner with you, Damian … you can be in charge."

Damian shifted, peering down over the edge at her.  “Your confidence is alarming,” he reported grimly, “and I am equally confident that you will come to regret such an offer.  Or are you counting on the power of hope to save you?”

Steph smiled beatifically.  “We’ll give ‘im until noon.”

"I shall hold you to that," Damian announced, flopping back over into what must have been a more comfortable position this time.  "Good night, Brown."

"Night, Damian."

Steph continued to wait, and only once she was absolutely certain that Damian was truly asleep—clearly miserable, but not faking in the slightest—she turned her face towards the window and breathed out slowly: “O?”

_"I see him.  Expect the Bat by dawn."_

"Tell him to use the door," Steph teased softly.  "If I catch him scaling the tree with ninety-four stitches in his leg, we will be having _so_ many words.  Possibly with Alfred.”

_"I’ll pass that on."_


End file.
